Reunited Guns N’ Roses Originally Planned to Play Just Five Shows Together

Guns N' Roses' Not In This Lifetime tour has been traveling around the world for nearly a year and a half now, but Slash says the original plans for his return to the band were much more modest: just five shows.

"That's initially what it was gonna be," the guitarist told Eddie Trunk during a wide-ranging interview. "We didn't have a big, long-term thing [planned]. Axl [Rose] and I got together, and we talked for a while and so on, and we thought it would be cool to these (2016) Coachella dates, because we [got] offered to get back together and do Coachella every year for years, and we obviously didn't do it [before]. So now that we were on good terms, it seemed like a good idea. So that was the basic focus — just to do those two shows and a couple of warm-up shows, so we did the Troubadour, one show in Vegas, in Mexico and the Coachella gigs. And that went so well, and everything just fell back into place. So we said, 'Okay, we'll do this U.S. run that they're offering us,' and then everything just snowballed from there."

Slash also talked to Trunk about the possibility of a new studio album from the partially reunited "classic" lineup of the band,which also features the return of founding bassist Duff McKagan. "It's been talked about. I think everybody wants to do it, and we'll just see what happens." Rose expressed similar sentiments in in recent interview, saying, "everyone seems to be getting along so you never know."

In the meantime, Slash's other band, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, will release a new album entitled Living the Dream this September. Late last month they released the first song from the new album, "Driving Rain."